August 10, 2006

"Lawyers are pathologically unhappy."

That's the first line of "The Destruction Of Young Lawyers," a relatively new (January 2006) book by Douglas Litowitz, a former law professor at Ohio Northern University. He sent me a copy after reading about Anonymous Lawyer. My grandma sometimes worries that my book is too harsh regarding law firms, and that people will be upset with me for satirizing them. That may be true, but if I have her read Litowitz's book, she will never say that again. This is an angry, angry -- and awesomely entertaining -- book. It's the book I kept wishing I could find in law school, that would put together all of the negative law firm thoughts in one place, so that I would know I wasn't alone. I have a review on my old blog of Thane Rosenbaum's The Myth of Moral Justice, which has a chapter about law firms, and says some of this same stuff but in different words, and in fewer pages, and when I found that, it was like someone had validated what I was thinking, but in an angrier and more coherent way. Litowitz makes a whole book of it. I don't know if I think it's this bad. I mean, it's in my professional interest to think law firms are the worst things ever, and have no redeeming qualities, and that everyone who works at one deserves to be hung, because then I could have an agenda and make my writing more passionate and inspired and angry... but I'm not angry, personally. I recognize that people go to law firms for real reasons, and that lots of jobs suck and at least at a law firm you get paid a lot, sometimes the work is interesting, sometimes the people aren't evil, and it's not like you have to carry heavy things too often.

Litowitz, on the other hand, is very angry. He's a terrific writer, and probably a pretty good client advocate, since he's somehow able to stay on message for 150 densely packed pages without ever letting go of that anger and falling into more complacent, lazy, rambling prose. I feel like most books, even when they're driven by a singular point of view, end up being a couple pages of quotable material, and then a hundred pages of support that never really rises to the level of the introduction. This book does not do that. This book is powerfully angry from cover to cover. Just when you think you're done with the angry part, he starts comparing law firm partners to Nazis and skinheads. It's terrific, filled with gems like this one: "Nobody commands lawyers to lose their ethical restraints or their moral conscience -- they do it on their own to keep their jobs."

Okay, let me back up for a second. Litowitz starts the book by presenting lots of evidence that lawyers are unhappy, hate their jobs, hate their lives, are only practicing law for the money, have alcohol and drug problems, depression, poor circulation, painful ingrown hairs, and so forth. Like the Patrick Schlitz law review article that everyone ends up reading at some point in law school. Then he identifies six causes of lawyer unhappiness:

Law School ("One thing that we know with certainty about law school is that it breaks people, that it is experienced as a trauma, an assault."); The Bar Exam ("an expensive, arbitrary exam that serves no discernable educational or social purpose, and is a humiliating and boring ritual of subjugation."); The transformation of law into a business that pretends to be a profession ("the basic structure of a law firm is no different from a house of ill repute"); The pressure upon lawyers to practice in a law firm setting instead of as a solo practitioner who can set her own limits on acceptable behavior ("Like an assembly-line worker who welds rivets to car doors for ten hours every day, [the lawyer] has no relationship with the ultimate consumer, not does she have control of her own production."); Technology ("The law office has become an electronic sweatshop"); and mental dysfunction ("Like abused kids who develop multiple personalities as a coping mechanism, young lawyers...").

There's so much more where those quotes came from. For each of those six causes, he rants for a chapter -- organized, coherent, persuasive ranting, but it's a rant nonetheless. And it's great to read, even if just for the sheer force of the words. I can't picture a book that could hate law firms, the bar exam, law school, any of this, more than this book does. It is really quite refreshing to read something so raw and untempered but still really powerful and persuasive.

I sort of imagine anyone who reads this and works at a law firm either has to read it for comedic purposes, or it will seriously cause them mental distress. So we're left with law students, and people like me, who are totally cool with people who want to write angry screeds about law firms. I can think of a dozen people who I would love to send a copy of this book to, except I feel like they'd think it was like sending them a copy of some Jewish conversion booklet and that it was propaganda to try and get them to come over to the dark side. All I mean to say, in this whole post, is that for a one-sided book against law firms and everything they're about, you can't do any better than this book. If you're looking for that, read it.

Wait a second. So at first, my post ended at the end of the previous paragraph. And then I tried to write Prof. Litowitz an e-mail telling him I posted about his book. And I started to apologize in the e-mail, for probably not hitting his talking points quite right, and for being overcautious to make sure it doesn't seem like I have an agenda against law firms. But, actually, I want to blog about this instead. Reading his book makes me wonder something. I feel like while I was in law school, while I was actually having to make the decision about whether to go to a firm, I felt the way this book does. But once I made the decision and knew I wasn't going to work at a firm, honestly, I lost a lot of that passion. And what I told myself is that probably, to a great extent, I had convinced myself it was much more terrible than it really is, and I was exaggerating it in my head, and it couldn't be that bad. And I really believe that. I really believe it can't be as bad as I thought it was when I was deciding whether or not to do it, because then everyone is crazy and of course everyone isn't crazy, and of course there are tons of jobs that are much worse, and of course some of the work isn't that bad, and of course people work long hours in every job, and of course the pay is good, and of course there aren't that many other choices out there, and of course.... And then I read a book like this and that little voice inside my head starts to whisper, "wait, maybe you were right, maybe it really is that bad." And the other voice says, "no, you're just telling yourself that to justify passing up the money and writing a book." And that first voice says, "no, trust your instincts." And that second voice says, "no, don't be an idiot, nothing is this black and white, things aren't *evil*, everything has tradeoffs, good parts and bad parts." And then the third voice says, "stop worrying about it, you don't need to worry about this, at all, seriously." And so I stop. But that's why the rest of this post probably feels like I'm apologizing for the book and how angry it is and that I like it anyway, because I'm not sure whether or not to trust the strong feelings that I had, and really don't have anymore because whether or not law firms are *evil* or just *not that much fun* I'm not working at one so it doesn't have to matter.

6 Comments

Does the book compare the American law firm to other nations' big firms (UK, France)? or to the legal profession in countries that historically didn't have big firms (Japan)? I would be interested in the book if it seemed to have a serious context for its problems with the particular formation of U.S. firms, but if it's just pissed off at the legal profession without specific ideas about how to improve it while still meeting client needs, I'm less inclined to read it. Really, sometimes it's helpful for a client to be able to come to a full service firm that has good lawyers in various specialties -- like Wal-Mart, except expensive. So like Harrods, I guess.

Does Litowitz think we should end the prohibition on unauthorized practice of law? or get rid of the bar exam? or of ABA approval for law schools? Also, how much of the book is occupied entirely with BigLaw? Its name notwithstanding, BigLaw is a pretty small percentage of all the legal work done. It doesn't handle the millions of simple transactions -- family law disputes, violations of state law -- that most lawyers spend their time on. My first close encounter with a lawyer was an externship in college for a Charlottesville lawyer who did everything. In one week, I witnessed a will, went through an accused drug dealer's papers, attended a hearing to get a falsely convicted felon's voting rights back...

I also haven't found law school at all traumatic. I haven't done particularly well, but I think many people who are traumatized by law school either aren't well suited to the study of law (don't like to read a lot, would rather analyze people or entities than semi-abstract ideas) or put too many demands on themselves (must get honors, must make law review, must get a clerkship). The two things that I have lucked into and that are pressures on many other people is that I'm not carrying a lot of debt, and I'm attending a school where a diploma will suffice to get me a job *somewhere*. The price structure of law school does seem to put unnecessary, external pressure on people.

Anyway, I saw in my Powell's email that you'll be posting at their blog next week -- I will be sure to take a look :-)

I think your review of the book tells me all I need to know. In my second year of law school I did the law firm interviewing thing and I was good at it and the interviewers were nice and attractive and took me to fancy restaraunts and I could see that I could easily become like them. But I decided not to nurture that side of my personality, as it did not need futher development, and instead to do something more interesting and less lucrative in order to nurture a more worthy side of my personality, in hopes that the virtuous side would grow and the other side would not. I think it worked. I never worked at a firm and I have been a very happy (ten years out) in my career choices. I kind of view it as the same reason I never tried drugs. What would I do if I liked them?

I applaud you for having the honesty to admit your doubts about the "evil" nature of large law firms. Your doubts are correct. People can work in a lawfirm, like any job, and have a good or bad experience. And become/remain good or bad people. Those who really worked there and still adamantly insist that lawfirms are evil or equivalent to mental trauma have some sort of axe to grind that they're not telling you about. It's not for everyone, but what job is?

Of course, I understand that it's easier to play for laughs by taking an extreme, even if un-realistic, route.

I bet you could find people who would hate the life you seem to be carving out for yourself as a writer/producer/comedian/actor.

Money plays a huge role, too. If you can avoid letting law firm life drag you into the moral and ethical abyss, and you can shut off work when you leave even if you don't get home until 10 p.m. every night and you can use your money not as a substitute for happiness but for things that have meaning to you (whether that's charitable works or private school for your kids or fast cars), then to many people, the tradeoff isn't much of a tradeoff at all and the evil part is overdone.